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News has recently broken on the search engine market about a new site, Neeva, being built just down the road from the Google headquarters, by several prominent ex-Google workers. This new search engine claims to work in a very different way from existing options, and has already attracted investment in the order of $40 million.

Privacy and Advertising Free

Google already has competitors such as Firefox and DuckDuckGo which emphasise privacy in searching and guarantee not to share your information. However, Neeva promises to go one step further in protecting the privacy of users and carrying no advertising on the site at all.

Ex-Googlers at the Helm

Neeva was founded by two senior former Google workers, Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan. One was in charge of the advertising at Google, and the other worked across Google companies for 12 years and was in charge of monetisation at YouTube. They are experienced in the search engine market, and have been joined at the new company by several other people who used to work at Google, including former vice Presidents of Engineering and Global Sales.

How Neeva Works

Most search engines are funded by advertising. Companies pay for advertising to appear on search result pages, keeping the service free for users. Neeva turns the model on its head by not having any advertising at all, instead charging users a monthly subscription to access the site. Exact charges are still to be set, but are estimated to be between $5 and $10 per month. Founders have said that the company hopes to lower subscriptions even further as the site gains users.

Neeva also recognises the issues around Google and data, and a growing concern over just how much the sites we use know about us. The site does require some data from users such as email addresses to long into the site, or bank details to make payment. But their approach to how they deal with your data is very different. Neeva users can access their data at any time, and can access it to update at any time. After 90 days, your search engine history will be automatically deleted from the platform. Neeva is only available to users over the age of 13. The site will offer many of the same developer tools as website managers are familiar with through Google, allowing them to track what searches are being done to discover their site, and where their users are coming from.

Is there a Demand for Neeva?

Do we really need yet another search engine? Levels of trust in Google are relatively high compared with other tech giants and there are already competing sites to Google. However, Neeva already has a waiting list running into the tens of thousands and has raised overall funding of almost $80 million. The company is already valued at $300 million, and has yet to announce a date for going live. Neeva is currently in the testing stages, with an invitation being required to get access to the site.